Need Ghostwriting Services? Choose a Ghostwriter Who Is Also an Editor
Hiring a Professional Ghostwriter? Check for Editing Experience
When you need ghostwriting services, there’s a list of things to consider before selecting that final writer. However, there is one key qualification many people overlook when seeking out these services. They don’t think to hire a writer who is also an editor—and that can end up being a big mistake.
Ghostwriters and Professional Editors Have Different Skill Sets
Not every writer is a good editor, and not every editor is a good writer. Even though the spheres of these two jobs intersect in many ways, editing and writing are still two very different skills.
Many people fall into this easy trap. They believe that, just because they’re working with professional writers, those writers are going to produce stylistically and grammatically sound work. This isn’t always the case. Some writers are fantastic for idea generation; others are amazing at writing a concise but descriptive sentence. Whatever their writing strengths, it doesn’t mean they are trained and aware of how to create a polished, error-free, stylistically consistent document.
Hiring a Professional Editor and a Ghostwriter Means Paying Twice
OK. So, it’s pretty clear writers and editor do different jobs, but why is it so important to find someone who can do both tasks? Bottom line: it comes down to dollars and cents.
If you hire a ghostwriter, you’re paying for that person to create (or to help create) a particular document or manuscript. Ghostwriting is a time-intensive and often collaborative process, and the industry standard isn’t cheap. (How much do ghostwriting services cost? For a full book, expect to pay anywhere from $25,000 to $250,000.)
If you’re making this kind of financial commitment, the last thing you want is to pay a third-party editor to clean up the typos. Remember, a high-quality, experienced editor doesn’t come cheap either. For a 50,000-word manuscript (approximately two hundred pages), you could easily pay another $6,000 to hire that editor.
A Third-Party Editor Won’t Know Your Manuscript Like Your Ghostwriter
Nobody will know your manuscript as well as your ghostwriter. He or she will have just spent months creating your document, and it will be infinitely better if that ghostwriter has the skills to perform the edit.
Your ghostwriter will be keenly aware of the right kinds of edits to make. Why? Because he or she will already know what you want in terms of:
Tone
Style
Word choice
Plot points and character traits
Cadence
Pulling in an unknown third person at this stage could lead to edits or changes you’re not happy with or that directly contradict preferences you already discussed with your ghostwriter.
Again, all this leads to costly and time-consuming fixes that could be avoided if your ghostwriter was also an editor. (To help gauge if a candidate is qualified on the editing side, here are 10 questions to ask a potential professional editor.)
The Editing Fee Should Be Included in the Professional Ghostwriting Services
If you’re lucky enough to find a skilled ghostwriter who is also a qualified editor, that ghostwriter should be able to create an error-free, clean document without having to charge a separate fee for that service. In this way, working with a ghostwriter who is also an editor means you’re getting two professional services for one price.
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